Miranda mercilessly cut down Nel’s pathetic attempt at excusing his selfish behavior. “You obviously could have waited to do that until we were approaching a conclusion to this crisis. Developing a new medicine is clearly the priority. Even Ryne is here, and he never helps anyone!”
“Wait, why does it seem like you’re standing up for me while also being angry at me?” Ryne asked, suddenly finding himself in the fire alongside Nel.
“Why wouldn’t I be angry with you?! You know exactly how to produce the fine consistency Misha is looking for. Maybe you’re trying to help her learn on her own, but you’ve clearly gone way too far in being hands-off! Do you plan on waiting until she collapses before you help her out?!”
“No, of course not...” Ryne mumbled, Miranda’s outburst leaving him at a rare loss for words.
“Anyway, it should be obvious that at this rate, we won’t be able to make medicine for all of our patients in time. If you aren’t going to let Misha or the people of Redford in on this new material, then you can handle taking care of all the sick people yourselves!”
After pointing an accusing finger at the two of them, she turned to Misha, who had stopped crying in surprise at Miranda’s outburst. Miranda started to gently push her out of the room.
“Let’s take a break somewhere else. Those two will handle the medicine itself, so let’s start thinking about how we’ll administer it. Making you do all the work when we have such a strict time limit is stupid in the first place.”
As Miranda was about to step out of the room, Nel called out to stop her. “Hold on, Miranda. Even if I gave you permission to use bucklerope, we don’t have any of it for you to use. If we sent for it now, it would take—”
“What are you talking about? I know you have plenty of gloves in your bag. You were so proud when you talked about them earlier.” Miranda gave a bright, cheerful smile. “I remember it being quite a problem that they’d melt under the heat of boiling water, making it quite difficult to disinfect them. But that just means we can melt them back down into liquid form easily, doesn’t it? And I’m sure someone as meticulous as you knows all about how to do that.”
Nel’s face fell. “Do you have any idea how much work it took to get those gloves...?” But Miranda showed him no mercy.
“You still have the hand models; you can make plenty more when you get back to the village. We can even send a bird back asking them to make more for you ahead of time, so get to melting. Okay, then. Misha, let’s go.”
Ryne patted Nel on the shoulder as the older man slumped. As she saw that from the corner of her eye as she left, Misha couldn’t help but admire how amazing Miranda was.
Shortly after, Nel and Ryne reappeared, having finished creating a large mortar with a thin, transparent lid. There was a hole in the middle of the lid for a pestle to slip through, but the lid fit tight around it and stretched and twisted as the pestle did, so it didn’t interfere with the actual work of grinding.
Once they were done grinding, they could wait a moment for the dust to settle, then remove the lid to see their work. Of course, the lid could be used more than once, so if they found it wasn’t ground fine enough yet, they could cover it again and keep working on it.
“There’s still some room for improvement, but this should do for now,” Nel explained with a sulk, but his attitude quickly brightened when Misha turned a look of awe up at him. “Impressive, right? Our plan was just to make a closed environment to do the grinding, but thanks to the elasticity of the bucklerope, we’ve got something close to an airtight seal.”
Nel’s bright smile as he happily explained his creation was immediately crushed by Miranda’s follow-up.
“Perfect. Now go make two more, please.”
And so it came to pass that Nel’s entire collection of precious gloves was melted down.
Meanwhile, Misha and Miranda worked to develop a device that could administer the medicine. How could they help people like the elderly or young children who didn’t have strong lungs to breathe in the powder?
They discussed a number of ideas, but ultimately the hint they needed came from a child’s flute. It was a simple toy, the stem of an aquatic plant cut to any random length and then hollowed out. Any child around the city would have one. They would punch holes in the stalk in varying spots, then cover those holes with their fingers to change the sound produced by the flute. The varying lengths and positions of the holes made each flute unique. Misha had once seen Yuu and the other kids playing with them.
They were small enough that even someone as young as Anna could make noise with it. And if she could blow air through it, she could obviously suck up air through one as well. Misha figured the powder would have no issues traveling up the stalk. Therefore, the plan was for people to stick the stalk into the vessel holding the medicine, then breathe in as hard as they could to suck up the medicine.
Discovering the best shape for the device took quite a bit of work. Misha found herself choking on powder throughout her experiments. Naturally, they were using a powder that was harmless even if inhaled for their experiments, but it was still rather unpleasant to choke on it.
Seeing Misha continuing with dogged determination despite the difficulties, the maids and families of the patients watching couldn’t bear to sit by doing nothing, and so they pitched in as well. They even stumbled upon a shape for the device that would allow people to safely breathe in the powder without having to practice first, which was a pleasant surprise.
When the first round of trials delivering the medicine to actual patients showed promise, everyone celebrated. As much as patients were still improving with the old medicine, watching loved ones recover and then decline in a repeating cycle was a painful experience for everyone. Each person involved in helping was proud to be a part of progress.
“Now that I think about it, I should have already seen the hints as to why trying a vapor had such bad results,” Misha murmured to herself as she worked her mortar.
“In what way?” Miranda asked, doing the same beside her. Now that the shipment of herbs had arrived, they spent every free moment making medicine.
“Yeah. Making the medicine to treat the Red Eye plague is a lot of work, right?”
The main ingredient of the medicine was a fernlike plant known as madleaf, found only in the untamed wilderness in the far north of Carmine. The madleaf they received had been delivered in a sun-dried form, as much moisture removed from them as possible. The way they were processed into medicine was pretty rare as far as Misha knew.